Peter Oundjian's collection includes what is only the second recording of the three-movement Doctor Atomic Symphony, which John Adams extracted in 2007 from his opera about Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the first atomic bomb, as well the short, scherzo-like Short Ride in a Fast Machine, which has become one of his most frequently performed concert pieces. But it is Harmonielehre, one of Adams's finest achievements and one of the orchestral landmarks of the last half-century, that dominates the disc and proves to be its biggest disappointment. Technically the score is efficiently enough played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, but the performance is generally so lacking in tension and the cumulative power that makes it such a compelling experience that someone coming to the work for the first time through this recording would wonder what the fuss was about. It's quite something to make the opening sound so flat, and to deprive the second movement's climax on the nine-note dissonance from Mahler's Tenth Symphony of so much intensity; any of the existing versions – conducted by Edo de Waart, Simon Rattle or Michael Tilson Thomas – show what's missing here.